The UAE is building a "Soft Empire"

Purely speculation on my part, but not without reason, it would not bode well for a resolution for the conflict in Sudan. It would indicate that The UAE is determined to expand their quasi dominion over the region and that they are unlikely to walk away. Now this is already indicated in Sudan anyway, but the Niger move would signal, the extent to which and the intensity of which, they are ambitious. They appear to be chiseling out a sort of soft empire with the help of mercenaries and money to insinuate themselves between the Sahil countries among others and the West. Wagner and other PMCs under UAE supervision are very likely to assume responsibility for security in Niger and elsewhere.

And with the loyalty of minority factions or militias, factions within the national armies like the Niger Presidential Guard or the RSF in Sudan, it will amount to an Emirati soft occupation. They want the whole region jealously under their control and they're wagering that their allyship, although it's increasingly ambivalent, their allyship with the West will afford them some latitude such that the West will not directly confront them as enemies. They want to insert themselves as managers for Russia and China in those lands that realistically are within their reach. And then they want to gradually assume greater and greater sovereign control as China and Russia inevitably recede in power. The main problem that I see with this plan, it's a good plan, geopolitically real realpolitik sort of a plan, is that The UAE seems to have adopted the old traditional model of colonialism whereby they want to install a puppet regime who is locally unpopular.

A local unpopular regime will never be disloyal to them and will never get big ideas about acting independently since he has little or no popular support among his own people and he's completely reliant on external sponsorship. The RSF, for example, is tremendously, enormously unpopular and hated among the Sudanese people. If The UAE helps countries drive out the French, drive out the Americans, drive out the West, of course, those people are going to resist the idea of the Emiratis just coming in to take their place. They will want to be sovereign and independent even though that is an unrealistic aspiration for most of these countries. The fact of the matter is that if you are a weak and vulnerable undeveloped country, being independent is not an available option for you.

Someone is going to become a dominant player in your country. And in this case, it's either going to be The United States or it's going to be Russia directly or it's going to be China directly or it's going to be the UAE balancing the interest of Russia, China and The United States with eventually Russia and China more or less withdrawing from that scenario, from that dynamic, leaving The UAE in a position of greater control. But independence, actual sovereignty, autonomy, these are not realistic options for most of these countries. They will be dependent on someone, they will be under someone's authority, they will have some degree of domination over them. But in my view, the UAE should abandon this idea of installing a minority government, installing an unpopular regime to be their puppet.

There's no reason why they have to take that approach. You can have a popular leader who is loyal to you as long as his loyalty to you is beneficial to the population. So if you install a regime, yes, theoretically, that will be a puppet regime, but it can be a partner. It can be an ally. It can be someone who knows that his partnership with you is good for him, not only his own administration, but for his country, and he can thereby be popular with his people because he is actually materially benefiting his population.

He's benefiting his people, and his relationship with you is benefiting his people. And then the people won't resent you. The people won't see you as a colonizer or as an imperial power or as a wannabe imperial power, even if it's a soft empire that you built, which is what I think they're doing. They should view the countries that have fallen under their sphere of influence or that they are ambitiously trying to bring within the within the sphere of their influence. They should view them in the same way that the Islamic empire used to view the various provinces.

The ruler or the president or the prime minister of that country is essentially like a governor back in the old days, a governor for the Ottoman Empire, a governor for the Khilafa and so on, who is ruling in a manner that is still maintaining his loyalty to your sponsorship because maintaining loyalty to your sponsorship is good for him and is good for his people. That to me would make more sense and it would make this plan more likely to work because if you're going to take this other approach, then you're going to deal with resistance, you're going to deal with unrest and your puppet regime will be ripe for an overthrow because obviously, the Americans, the French, the Europeans, the West, they're not going to leave well enough alone. They're not gonna leave you alone, particularly if they see that you're not actually managing that country on their behalf and securing and balancing their interests because The UAE is positioning itself as a manager to balance the competing interests of Russia, China, and The United States in Africa, in The Middle East, and in Asia, particularly in Africa. And the the relationship already between The United States and The UAE is already becoming rather ambivalent.

The US is getting increasingly uncomfortable about The UAE and their apparent independence, their apparent defiance of US will. I think that the UAE is explaining this to The United States as we're not defying you, We are being realistic and we are safeguarding our own interest by maintaining relationship with China, maintaining a relationship with Russia. And trust us, we can make that work to your benefit. That's the way I think The UAE is basically playing it diplomatically with The US. But if The United States sees that the Emiratis are actually ambitious for running their own independent block, their own independent sort of centralized soft empire regardless of what The US wants and they see that they are having their influence replaced by The UAE and not secured by The UAE, then there's nothing to stop them.

There's nothing to prevent them from mobilizing and activating their own version of Wagner which is ISIS or Al Qaeda to cause instability and chaos and violence in the countries that The UAE is trying to rule by proxy. So it's not a good approach to think that you can rule violently or that you can rule by force in these countries. You must build goodwill with the populations. I think that The UAE is entirely too aggressive and has put too much trust in the reliability of violence to achieve a solution. I think that we we have seen we're seeing that in Sudan where they're not going to back down.

They haven't backed down. They're not going to back down, and they're willing to see the country spiral into violence. We saw in Yemen. We've seen that they are ineffective in establishing military control and domination over any particular country. And in lieu of achieving a decisive military conquest, they're willing to watch the country just spiral into violence with the hopes that eventually exhaustion will set in and they'll be able to carry out their will on a defeated and broken population.

It's ruthless. No question about it. But I still believe that ultimately, the creation of such a soft empire, the creation of such a such an economic block and political block that is working in some centralized way, even if it's not an official centralized way, this is as close as we can get to the resurrection of a Muslim empire, of an Islamic empire. And it may be brought about in a ruthless and a very difficult way, but it doesn't have to be done that way. This is my point.

If The UAE and Saudi Arabia focus on building popular support and appointing rulers in those countries with that are under their sphere of influence, if they focus on supporting rulers in those countries who are more their partners, junior partners, okay, but partners, not puppets. Partners who benefit and whose people benefit from partnership with The UAE and Saudi Arabia, then it doesn't have to be violent and it doesn't have to be popular resistance and it doesn't have to be resentment from the population, which will make the entire project work a lot more smoothly. And obviously, it's not only, in my opinion, not only more politically reliable and it's more politically viable, it's obviously more moral and it's more correct Islamically. So I I hope that they will take a different approach and I hope that they will concentrate more on winning the hearts and minds of the people and not through deception, not through PR, not through propaganda, but through actual benefit that's brought through partnership between their country and The UAE and Saudi Arabia.